


the steps you take

by 26stars



Series: How I Met Melinda [18]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Ballerina May, College AU, College Student! Daisy, Gen, Marvel Fluff Bingo, Referenced Katya, Referenced Meldrew, Shield-Free AU, dance teacher au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:41:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26123644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars
Summary: Skye didn't mean to get stuck taking a Ballet for Non-Majors class her last semester before graduation, but it's her own fault for not registering for classes in time. She has a great instructor though, and that makes all the hardest parts just a little bit easier.For the AoS AU August prompt: SHIELD-free AU and my Marvel Fluff Bingo Square 'dance teacher au'
Relationships: Melinda May & Skye | Daisy Johnson
Series: How I Met Melinda [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/797127
Comments: 20
Kudos: 42
Collections: AOS AU August 2020, Women of the MCU





	the steps you take

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lazyfish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyfish/gifts).



> Special thanks to Al for being my ballet resource.

This was really no one’s fault but Skye’s own.

Four-year degrees at this college, even in STEM fields, all required a PE-credit for graduation. There were plenty of options, everything from swimming to yoga to ballroom dance, but Skye had continued putting off adding such a class to her schedule until the last possible semester. It wasn’t like there wouldn’t be options whenever the term rolled around, she told herself.

That might have been true if she had registered for classes on time, when the online access opened for those with senior-level hours. Unfortunately, however, she forgot about registering on the day-of, and then told herself all her classes were senior-level computer science classes and it wasn’t like they would fill up so she could just register for classes whenever…

She had forgotten, though, until she checked her degree sheet the night before the new term began, about the lingering unfilled checkbox on the sheet—something in the physical education realm.

_Oh well, shouldn’t be hard to add myself to a yoga class…_

Actually, it was. Everything chill was already full, most of the open classes didn’t work with her existing class schedule, and Skye was now faced with three options: swimming, rowing, or ballet.

_Are you kidding._

For other people, the decision might have been a no-brainer, but Skye had never learned to swim as a child and was too embarrassed to show up to either water-related class and admit that, so ballet it was. As soon as she registered, she got an automatic email from the instructor informing her of the required materials for the class: one item was a pair of pointe shoes.

 _Crap_.

~

Skye shows up fifteen minutes before the class is to begin a few days later, as the email had ordered. The room is in the Fine Arts building, down in the basement, a room with one mirrored wall and barres along three sides. There are only about twenty other students in there, all of them female, and Skye adds her shoes to the shoe shelves outside the room before stepping in on the polished floor with bare feet.

Everyone in the room is still dressed in regular sleepy-student clothes (it’s eight in the morning after all…), except for one girl already wearing a leotard and yoga pants, and Skye guesses from her tightly-bunned hair that this girl already has some ballet experience. She doesn’t recognize anyone, so Skye sits down on the wooden floor at the edge of the knot of women, waiting for a glimpse of the teacher.

The woman enters silently just a minute before eight, but the reaction of the class is dramatic. The other girls immediately fall silent, and Skye takes her cue from everyone else, studying the woman while she waits to be told what to do next.

The instructor has dark hair and Asian features, lithe arms swathed in a black leotard and legs hidden inside a flowing skirt. She doesn’t smile as she begins passing out the syllabi in her hands, and once everyone has one, she moves to the front of the room and folds her arms.

“My name is Melinda May, and this is Ballet for Non-Majors. If you somehow managed to wander into the wrong classroom and ought to leave, you have five seconds.”

No one moves, and the woman nods before going on.

“Your level of experience with dance is not supposed to matter for successful completion of this course, but I will start by saying that everyone wishing to pass must have the same dedication to learning this art. Grace will be given for true beginners’ skill levels, but your attitude must still be that of an experienced dancer. You need to dress the part and approach our time in this room with more care than you probably do when you head to any other class. This my profession, and I don’t tolerate disrespect for my craft or the studio. By showing up to class after the free-withdrawal window closes, you are telling me that you are committed to the disciplines we’ll be learning here.”

Skye winces internally.

_Crapppppp._

The woman picks up a spare syllabus. “Let’s have a look with what is planned for the term.”

Syllabus day, like any other first day of class, is mostly just a guided reading exercise. The teacher walks them through the course objectives (which includes plenty of phrases that scare Skye, especially the phrase “daily practice…”), attendance policy, course evaluation breakdown, dress code ( _“your ankles must be visible”? “If the hair falls, so does your grade”?),_ and out-of-class requirements (two performances of selected dance productions on campus or in the city).

By the time they’ve made it halfway through the 12-page packet, Skye is actually sweating.

_There’s no way I can pull this off. So what if I don’t know how to swim, it’s not like the teacher would let me drown…this here is way too much…_

The back half of the packet is actually the first day’s assignment—general vocabulary for a ballet class. Most of the words are actually French or Italian, so the teacher leads them through pronunciation practice as she explains all the terms.

“There will be a quiz at the beginning of our next class,” the woman explains after instructing them to close the packets. “Now, follow me to the dressing rooms. You’ll leave your bags there before class tomorrow and change clothes and shoes before you enter the studio. Today is the last day I will see jeans, yoga pants, or any loose-fitting clothes other than a ballet skirt in this room, or anyone’s bare feet. Let’s go.”

They are dismissed after that, and Skye exhales as she shoves her feet back into her boots outside the room and trails along after the crowd of young women as they leave the basement.

“Man, this blows,” a girl near her mutters. “I don’t need this—I can wait until next term for a PE class I’d actually pass…”

“I’m supposed to graduate this spring,” Skye mutters back. “This is the only class I can do.”

“Good luck with that, then,” the girl offers, giving her a sympathetic look before they part ways in the sunshine.

Skye has to follow the references on the back of the syllabus to find a leotard in an actual store in town (not online) before their next class, as well as a pair of tights and a pair of ballet shoes (pointe shoes were optional if you were a beginner, apparently). She feels a little ridiculous trying everything on—she’s never even watched a ballet before, so the only people she’d ever seen in outfits like this were kids still losing baby teeth. With the whole outfit on, she doesn’t feel elegant…she feels silly.

Nevertheless, she studies for the vocabulary quiz and shows up for class two days later with her new outfit hidden beneath sweatpants and a hoodie, leaving both in the dressing room as she’d been told and slipping on the ballet shoes at the door. She checks her hair in the dressing room mirror as she came in—she’d needed a YouTube tutorial for the bun, and it had taken nearly half a can of hairspray to keep her flyaways down, but it looks like the style was still holding steady.

The small crowd of women gathered in the middle of the studio is noticeably smaller than it had been in the first class. Skye can guess plenty of reasons why someone would have quit, but she didn’t have that luxury. She can muscle through sixteen weeks of this—after all, it was only her fault she was here.

~

“Muscle through” turned out to be the appropriate phrase, because it only took one class to realize that this wasn’t considered a PE-credit class for no reason. It may not have called for the same cardiac stamina of swimming or running, but it did call for activation of almost every muscle Skye knew she had and plenty of muscles she didn’t.

For fear of being judged by her classmates, Skye always tried to grab the barre position furthest from the mirrors, which was usually the back of the line, even if they often turned to face the opposite direction. The instructor, Miss May, never really stayed in one place long, though she moved so silently that Skye often jumped when the woman suddenly spoke right next to her. May was a good teacher—even though she was a professional, she was good at explaining technique to a total noob like Skye, and that made all the difference. Of course, May had plenty of opportunities to correct Skye’s form, and she often did, but she wasn’t awful about it. Just acknowledged, corrected, and coached. On issue at a time.

They were supposed to be practicing on their own time, and Miss May had made sure they all knew where the dance practice rooms were. Skye was too embarrassed to show her face there—around actual _dance majors_ —so she made do in her living room. At least her course load in this term was manageable, so even though Skye spent plenty of her time sitting at her computer with a hot or cold pack on at least one sore muscle nearly all the time, she was keeping her coursework and homework up without issue.

The syllabus had included a page of events that could be attended for class credit, and tickets could be partly reimbursed by the school. When she checks the options against her schedule, Skye is surprised to find that a Sunday performance of the city’s ballet company near the end of the term actually works with her schedule, and since a matinee show is affordable, she booked a ticket online and sets a reminder on her phone for it—she can’t afford to forget about something as important as registering for classes again, if she wants to make it out of school with a degree this spring.

Classes continue more or less in the same form throughout the spring, and while Skye would never consider herself a natural, it feels good to feel certain things getting easier. She can plie farther down every week. Miss May isn’t correcting her “lines” half as much as she used to. Even her friends had start to comment that she walks a little differently than before.

And amazingly, she passes her midterm with flying colors.

The syllabus had told them to dress nice when attending a ballet recital, so Skye wears a modest dress and heels—no one had to know they were both secondhand anyway. She finds the venue all right, and city parking was free on Sundays, so she is feeling good as she picked up her ticket at the box office and headed in to find her seat.

That all changes when she gets into the hall and sees her teacher standing in the aisle, chatting with someone and smiling cheerfully.

_Crap crap crap…_

Skye freezes in place, pretending to study the program, and doesn’t force herself to look up until the woman is literally standing at her elbow. When she does raise her head, she tries to force a smile.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Miss May says with a pleasant smile.

Skye tries to act friendly, though she’s actually not sure if that’s the right thing to do—seeing teachers outside of class was weird even if it was at college.

“Hi! Didn’t know you would be here today.”

Miss May smiles again. “My husband is home with a stomach bug today, but he wouldn’t hear of me missing our daughter’s performance. Come sit with me—I’ve got better seats.”

Skye’s mind is still reeling from the causal mentions of _husband_ and _daughter_ to even process the phrase “daughter’s performance” until she’s seated beside May and the woman shows her a name in the program under the heading for soloists.

_Katya Garner-May._

“Have you ever seen Swan Lake before?” May asks quietly as the lights start to dim.

“I’ve never seen a ballet before,” Skye admits in a whisper.

Melinda doesn’t say anything else before the lights go down, and Skye sits up as the live orchestra strikes up the overture.

Having never seen a ballet before, Skye can’t really compare the performance to anything, but with her new foundation in ballet, she now notices with some frustration just how _easy_ professional dancers make everything look. That alone is worth the nearly three hours she spends in that theater, managing not to touch her phone the whole time the lights are down. May nudges her and points out one dancer when she goes center-stage for a solo—the young woman is a lithe brunette with eyes that Skye can see flashing even from her seat. She’s obviously good, but Skye follows May’s lead and doesn’t clap after her solo, even though she kind of wants to.

After the final curtain calls, May smiles at Skye as she gets to her feet.

“So what did you think of your first ballet?”

Skye smiles and decides to be honest. “Goals, I’d say.”

May smiles wider. “You know, my daughter didn’t start ballet until she was fifteen. It’s really never to late to start chasing a new passion.”

“You know I’m a computer science major, right?” Skye jokes as the two of them make their way up the aisle to the back of the auditorium.

“Sure, but everyone needs a hobby. The steps you take don’t have to be big. They just need to take you in the right direction.”

~

On the day of the final exam, Skye wears what is still her only leotard and leggings and shoes, buns her hair with much more ease, and warms up at the barre by herself before class begins. They’re doing their final performances in front of their classmates, and as usual, Skye avoids eye contact with most of them, though that’s much easier when they’re all sitting on the floor and she’s staring over their heads. She mostly feels relieved when it’s over, and when the written portion is done too, she heads out to pick up her cap and gown, which she’ll need for the ceremony next weekend, as long as she’s passed all her classes. Grades will be posted at the end of the week, but she’s surprised to find an email from her ballet instructor waiting for her that evening.

_I’m very impressed by your dedication and advances this year. You certainly have potential, should you ever wish to continue studying. I teach a ballet for adults class on the weekends in the city—let me know if you are ever interested in giving it a try._

_~Melinda May_


End file.
